


Found (We Are the Ashes On the Ground)

by onefootonego (startingXI)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, F/F, Soulmate AU, also featuring nasa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:29:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8123551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startingXI/pseuds/onefootonego
Summary: forget all the faces you've missed, remember the hearts that you've risked





	

the first time you meet her, she's dying.

you don't exactly meet her, no - you wake up one night, screaming in pain, tears streaming down your face. curled and clutching at your leg as your sister curls around you. it's the gesture that counts, your sister is tiny, all muscle and attitude and strength as you rock back against her. she whispers your name over and over again, grounding you to the room

_anya, anya, anya_

it’s a trick she learned from you.

you don't believe in a god, but that night was the first time you prayed. sobbing, begging for it to be over. making deals with deities, wondering what could cause this much pain, how anyone could live through this much pain.

\--

she died once, two nights later, your soulmate. you remember the long seconds where you couldn't breathe. lexa, your little sister, screaming your name. you heard her -

_anya, anya, anya_

yet it sounded like she was shouting through water. through thick frosted glass. you couldn't move, couldn't breathe, the world must be ending you had decided.

the end of the world isn't painful, it's the secret you carry when she, wherever she is, comes gasping back to life.

your lungs almost exploded out of your chest. the world was black, yellow and white spots shimmering across your bedroom. lexa never clings to you, but she did then, gripping you and her chest heaving in relief.

\--

the scars came in the weeks that followed, first faint lines, bleeding into dark gashes. there's one, the biggest, the nastiest, across your quad and it reminds you of that tv show House. except you can walk, all you bear is the mark itself, not the physiological consequences. although you can imagine.

\--

the pain still comes, in waves sometimes. it makes your eyes water and you grip the kitchen counter a little more fiercely, but you carry on.

lexa does not ask when you start wearing a bandana around your wrist. you suspect she knows, after all, she carries matching scars. from someone else's pain.

\--

clarke offers, one night when she's curled with lexa on the couch, to get her mom to take a look. you could get answers you know. an idea of what happened, how it happened, maybe even who -

‘thanks,’ you say, but you can't betray her like that.

it isn't your story to discover, instead, and perhaps foolishly, you believe it is a story you must hear. from her, whenever your paths are finally flung across each other's.

clarke shrugs, kisses the the top of lexa’s head - you know she does not know what you feel.

she and lexa have been friends, soulmates, since they were four. since they met at the park and got matching scars when lexa fell out of a tree and broke her arm. they haven't had to wonder, haven't spent long aching years seeing the tiniest of scratches, wondering, searching.

you'd almost accepted that maybe there just wasn't anyone for you.

you could have been okay with that.

now though, now you just have questions - and hope.

\--

one year passes, the pain in your leg all but disappears, except for the familiar ache of coming rain. two years pass and you stop wearing a bandana, the scars stopped coming and you have nothing to hide.

it's been three years and you've bore your leg for only one person. you'd met her at the dog park of all places. she had scars on her wrist and she’d asked you to coffee.

you'd said yes because you liked her smile. you liked holding her hand even more, liked kissing her neck and hearing the breath catch in her chest.

months in, and it had taken months - lovely, slow, meandering days on weeks, she pulled her shirt off for you. she’d gotten on her knees, pulled your pants down to your calves - she’d seen the scars and gasped.

your heart had broken because she was lovely and kind and fierce, but she was never destined to be yours.

\--

you stop going to the dog park, start running instead.

lexa comes with you, she likes the exercise, the burning in her lungs.

[clarke hasn't been around in a while but lexa won't talk about it. they're soulmates, they'll work it out]

\--

running is good, it's new, different. better though is when lexa gets you into crossfit, and you fall into love in a different way.

you show up to the box three days a week, within a month you match lexa’s clean + jerk personal best. she hates it, but it pushes her too. it's not like she never wins, she beats you on the toes to bar every single time.

it's not fair, she's maybe five three, there's so much less of her to fold. so much less gravity to fight.

people don't stare. not when you wear your new nike combat pro spandex and the scars are harsh in the light. it makes you love the place a little bit more.

\--

clarke starts showing up again, you never hear exactly what changed, or what pulled them apart in the first place, but they both carry new scars. not visible, you don't even know if they notice, but clarke holds lexa a little bit tighter, you see the way they look at each other.

it was good for them, the pain.

\--

you change jobs, nasa was hiring and you had applied, drunk, on a whim. but your resume is impressive and you carry yourself like the badass you are. the interview was a breeze, the background check with only juvenile stumbling blocks get cleared away because they can't afford to not hire you.

all your friends had gotten together, flooded the apartment on your last weekend and made sure you got properly portland shitfaced one last time. you puked for two days when it was all said and done, but you had never loved your friends more.

the day before your flight, clarke moved in. you had watched your room transform into an art studio. it didn't hurt as much as you had expected, they're well suited for this place, this space. you smile because it, and your dog Leo, are in good hands.

\--

you do not like virginia. not at first, it's cold and wet and the people look at you sideways when you ride into town.

you love your job though. the research centre at langley becomes your truest home, an office with a couch and a spare set of clothes. walls of whiteboards and boxes of expo markers. long nights and early morning and the god awful worst coffee you've ever tasted. you're helping shape the future and you love it. the physics, the math, the art, the way it all comes crashing together.

you're not supposed to tell but when lexa comes to visit you say, drunkenly, you're going to help put a person on Mars.

\--

raven reyes has a reputation before she ever steps foot in the door. a year after you first start she's transferring from the jet propulsion lab to help with the practical application of the new tech she's pioneered.

there is so much hype for her arrival, you're mostly just thrilled at the idea of having another woman around.

(you like kelley, the little stanford grad who speaks fast and calls her girlfriend every night when they're going to stay late - but it's just the two of you against an army of intelligent morons)

\--

the first time you see raven reyes you have to sit down.

it's her.

you don't know how you know for sure, but the moment she walks in, the cane she wields barely noticeable, you remember the night she died.

she doesn't give you a second glance, looks at the whiteboard kelley has spent weeks working and says they're further behind than she thought. her impression was they were putting a rocket up in the next five years, or were we just going to copy the japanese when they did it?

she's brash, but brings good coffee with her and it's only days before she’s won everyone over.

\--

you do not tell lexa about raven. but she can sense something is up, that something is different. she lets you have this secret, asks about work and crossfit and how many times a week you actually go home instead of grab another change of clothes from the trunk of your car.

you tell her you're happy and she doesn't need to worry.

\--

getting to know raven is slow work. for weeks it seems like no one leaves the labs, working hard as they are, adjusting to the brutal pace raven has set for them. one whiteboard has become a calender, no one knows when she drew it, only that one afternoon it appeared.

it carried every deadline, every meeting, every birthday. it was colour coded to each member of the team, her team.

the calendar became the centre of their lab, they breezed through deadlines. the first time you saw raven smile was when the prototype of her new engine system was delivered. a life size three dimensional replica.

she had given everyone the rest of the afternoon off as soon as it was rolled in.

\--

everyone goes for drinks, to celebrate, to breath a sigh of relief. raven buys the first round.

three drinks in and for the first time since you first saw her your scar burns. you've thought a hundred ways how to tell her, how to ask her. yet you don't know. you don't know. you don't say anything.

the more you drink the more the scars become all you can think about. you have to know, have to.

you walk outside, away from low ceilings and suffocating thoughts of your scars. you call lexa, she's out, ring shopping for clarke, but answers your call right away. you lean back against the brick wall and tell her you think raven is your soulmate.

you hear lexa’s breath stop, she asks why you think that. you tell her every detail of the moment she walked into the lab that first day. you remember it in such brutal clarity. you tell her of the limp raven carries on her left leg, of the cane, the custom brace she replaced it with. you're convinced, lexa knows it, says you should talk to raven, it's the only way to know for sure.

\--

you wait, plan for the perfect moment. hope the stars align and you can find a moments privacy. you know exactly what you're going to say.

the moment comes, raven in her office, you, alone in yours. everyone else gone elsewhere, it doesn't matter. you're shaking as you walk the hall, tread the familiar path. it's now or never.

\--

she looks up when you knock on the door, gestures for you to come in.

she knows.

you know the same way you know she's your soulmate. all the words you planned to say leave you and you're left, standing there with your tongue in knots and her face betraying nothing.

you say one truth “i felt you die.”

she looks at you, something flickers in her eyes.

“four years ago.” you continue “for thirty seven seconds you were dead.”

“yes.” she says.

“i have the scars.” you can't stop talking, proving to her what you both know to be true, neither looking away “all of them.”

she looks to her wrist.

“i know.”

you nod, she's betraying nothing to you. says nothing more.

“okay.” you say, you leave the room.

\--

you take a week off work and fly to portland, leave that night. show up the doorstep in the rain with nothing but your leather jacket and a bottle of jack.

lexa takes it from you and says six am is an inappropriate time to drink whiskey. you let her, she ushers you into the apartment and doesn't ask questions.

you sleep for fifteen hours in the guest room, wake up and the stars are bright in the night sky. you hate them.

there's a plate of food for you in the fridge, and the bottle of jack is on the counter where lexa left it. you get drunk sitting on the kitchen floor, cursing the day you ever left this city.

\--

lexa finds you there, curled with leo in your lap. she throws a pile of clothes at you and tells you to get changed. you tell her crossfit is not a hangover cure.

you get dressed anyway.

you struggle through most of the workout, filthy fifty makes you it's bitch and you collapse into the passenger seat of lexa's car and puke out the window.

lexa frowns, but doesn't say anything. instead, drops you off at a diner. she’s on shift, leans out the drivers side window and says it's good to see you. honestly, you don't even have the effort to flip her off.

clarke, it seems, is taking you out for breakfast. she's waiting for you in a booth when you walk in. politely ignores the quiet groan you give when you sit down. she doesn't make small talk, which you appreciate.

you know she understands the self destructive properties at the bottom of a bottle.

despite your entire body feeling like jello, you manage to lift fork to mouth. the food is greasy and amazing and clarke tips fifty percent.

“a friend owns the place.” she says “i’m trying to get him to ask out our other friend, octavia. you'd like her.”

you nod, you're sure you would.

\--

clarke is mysteriously absent that night. lexa shows up with two bags of takeout straight after work and you know she's going to want answers.

she doesn't need to ask, you simply have to tell her. so over butter chicken and the best garlic naan in the city, you tell her how raven didn't even blink. how you're soulmates and she doesn't even care.

you don't cry but you stare at the dark tv, wondering when your life turned into you hiding in your little sisters apartment.

\--

they don't give you answers, over take out lexa had given her best advice, watched you accept it.

she helps in her own way, drags you to crossfit two more times. gets you running with her after shifts. clarke flits in and out, she's apparently become quite the cook. says its something like art and science together.

you watch them cook together and it makes your scars burn.

\--

kelley texts you, asks if you're okay. says the office is quiet without you. says raven has been in a foul mood for days. barely leaves her office. they're falling behind again in the deadlines. money is being cut, none of them can afford to work for free.

you reply, tell her there was an emergency, you're in portland for the week. she sends you funny memes that make you smile and you miss the work, you do.

\--

arriving back in virginia is what you imagine landing on mars to be like. you step off the plane and everything seems foreign. it's hard to breathe, you move slowly, your apartment an unfamiliar landscape. you barely sleep in your bed. it's too dark, too quite.

you go to crossfit even though your body aches, but you need the burning pain to prepare for the day ahead.

kelley hugs you when you walk back in, says she can catch you up on what they've done. everyone seems happy to see you, all but raven who doesn't say anything to you at all.

\--

you don't leave for two days. you and kelley work day through night through day again making fuel load calculations, triple checking them before putting them into the sim. there's barely a moment for celebration, you were both right the whole time.

it's a critical number. a major win for the team and you let kelley take it to raven. who, by all accounts, didn't even crack a smile. just took the paper to look it over and nodded kelley away.

\--

in the weeks that follow your team drops from ten to eight to seven to five. the five of you are trying to do double the work with half the energy. you're all drained, bending and bending. its a wonder no one breaks quite yet.

it comes to kelley first, who doesn't show up one day and sends you an email saying she was offered a job with google. says she's taken it, she and her fiancé are moving to LA. she tells you that if you ever checked your mail you'd see the invitation to their wedding.

it's what makes you go home, that and the prospect of working without Kelley seems grim. you stick the invitation on your fridge, put the date into your phone's calendar.

\--

the office is lonely with only four of you. you miss kelley, her humor, the lunches that her girlfriend - fiancé, you correct, would pack her and kelley would share. raven is barely seen these days, but you're wearing a bandana again.

it helps, for some reason, to know that she's hurting too. that she feels something.

even if it's nothing for you.

\--

you’re doing calculations on the board where the calendar used to be when there's an almighty crash.

you look up, see the shattered pieces of raven’s precious engine system scattered on the floor. and standing over them, amongst them, is raven. you look at her and see more emotion in that second than you have in the past year.

“what-” you start

“go home.” she bites. “everyone go home.”

people filter out, the three of them that survived, but you remain. it's a faceoff, standing there defiant “what happened?” you ask, voice level.

“they cut our funding, that's what fucking happened.” raven spits “effective immediately. nasa doesn't fucking exist. it's a godamn joke.”

you're shocked, and apparently without a job. you stare at her “when-?”

“i’ve spent the past six months testifying to congress, arguing why what we’re doing matters. but they don't see it, nasa was just a bargaining chip for them. fucking politicians. now it's gone. it's a shell. a front, like they're actually doing science that matters.”

she's shaking with rage, you can feel it radiating off her in waves. you've never seen show this much emotion.

“and before you say it,” she starts accusatory “i know i can get hired privately. that's not the fucking point. the dream,” she says shakily “the dream was always nasa. do it with nasa. send people to mars, beyond. my engine could fucking do it too, the fools.”

you don't know what to say, you feel like you're watching something intensely personal, intensely private. but this isn't the first time. not with raven, no, whether she likes it or not, you died with her that day.

you know her pain.

\--

she comes home with you, sits quiet and angry in your passenger seat. she looks around your apartment when you arrive. scoffs at the empty fridge, mumbles an approval at your choice of beer. you watch her walk around the entire place, twice.

she leaves the bedroom for last, skipping it the first time.

you're behind her, watching how she stands in the doorway stock still. waiting, you realize, for permission “you can.” you say.

she moves quietly into the space, in the dark. you stand behind her, in the doorway, waiting for her judgement.

“this place,” she says, speaking to your window “it isn't you.”

you don't wonder how she knows.

\--

you and raven make a run to the liquor store and buy more alcohol than you've ever bought.

you order six pizzas and between the two of you, eat them all, cursing nasa, the government, politicians, the moon, anything and everything. it feels good to be angry. god, it feels good.

\--

it's four am when raven lunge for your sweatpants. you lurch away, looking at her, slurring, asking what the fuck?

“i want to see it.” raven says, staring at dead on, “the scar. show me my scars.”

“not like this.” you say, she softens, shoulders falling.

weeks ago you would have killed to hear those words from her lips, but tonight they're bitter and make you burn. you're angry and drunk and so is she.

when she doesn't say anything you think she's angry, but no, turns out she's just passed out. asleep where she sits, head slumped.

you praise years of crossfit when you manage to carry her up the stairs and get her into your bed. you puke into a shoe all the way back to the couch.

\--

the next morning the sun is far too bright and your back is killing you. you stand up and feel your stomach revolt. you sit back down, cradle your head in your hands, elbows on knees.

you hear the toilet flush above you and know raven must be awake. she makes her way down the stairs slowly, hears her pause “oh god,” she says “tell me I didn't hurl into your shoes.”

“no,” you say and you have to laugh, although you couldn't say why “no, I remember that part. that was me.”

“we got so fucked.” raven says and she's smiling - you ignore what it does to your heart.

“yes.” you reply “yes we certainly did.”

\--

it turns out raven is an excellent cook, somehow she makes two amazing omelets and makes you walk to the store to get orange juice “it's not a hangover cure.” she says firmly “it's some goddamn nutrition for us.”

god knows you both ate enough shit at the lab.

it was a bold attempt and all that nutrition ends up in the toilet.

\--

you both sit on your bed, wearing your clothes, with the blackout curtains pulled across.

“i owe you an apology.” raven says.

“yes.” you say hoarsely, you have done so much throwing up today “you do.”

“i’m sorry.” she says “but if we - you know, while the project was still going, we would have lost it all sooner. they were looking for a reason to cut us. i thought we had a chance if i ignored-” she shakes her head “but it was fucked either way.”

it makes sense and you know her motives there are pure. you remember the emotions you saw yesterday, her heart and soul were in that lab and they were yanked away. somewhere you'd already forgiven her.

“do you want to see them?” you ask, not looking at her.

“if you want to show me.”

you do. you do.

\--  
she stares at them as you lay there, exposed in the dark for her. all her scars reflected back at her.

“may i?” she asks, hand hovering over your quad.

“of course.”

her touch is feather light, ghosting across your skin, across her scars.

“i’ve always wondered,” she says “what they look like.”

“beautiful.” you say without pause, and you're looking at her.

you catch the faintest flush in her cheeks as she looks up at you “smooth.” she says with a smile.

“and true.” you shrug.

“i know.” she hums, smirking.

\--

you fly to portland with two bags and no intentions of ever returning to virginia. raven is with you, she has one bag and a locked briefcase with her notes.

landing in portland feels like coming home and you let out a breath when the plane touches down. raven needs gentle shaking awake and she refuses the priority disembarking, saying she can wait in line with everyone else.

\--

no one is home when you get to the apartment, only leo who scampers from the couch, his entire body vibrating with excitement.

he takes to raven at once, who takes one look at the art on the walls and declares there's no way this is your place. you laugh and tell her it isn't, it's your sister and her fiancés.

“oh,” you add “i’m going to put you as my plus one for kelley’s wedding.”

“good.” raven says, casual as ever “because I lost my invite. we may have burned it.”

“kelley will love that story.” you say back

\--

it all feels so normal, clarke and lexa meeting raven over dinner that night. you explain what happened, how you're both suddenly out of jobs and sure as hell never going back to the east coast.

clarke and raven get along right away, talking about the art in food, how under appreciated the science of it is.

lexa is slower to come around.

\--

you know the moment lexa forgives raven for what she did to you in the beginning.

it is plain as day on her face, she catches sight of you two, apartment hunting from the guest bed, and raven has just made some horrible pun. you're both laughing, your abs aching from the effort, but you catch sight of lexa walking back to the laundry closet, pausing for a moment to watch. and you know.

you know that she's forgiven raven and she believed that somehow it would come to this all along - happiness and comfort and home. everything you've seen her share with clarke for so many years.

\--

you dance at kelley’s wedding, holding raven close, the lights low, music slow. it’s late in the night now, those with kids gone upstairs in the hotel. this may be the last dance of the evening. it seems impossible to have raven kissing at your neck like this and to be this happy.

you think about it all. you both have job offers, raven has six, you with a modest four.

leo prefers cuddles with raven in the morning instead of coming running or to crossfit without you. Portland suits you both and there's an apartment under negotiations with a skylight above the bed.

\--

raven was sold on it the moment she walked in the door. and you were too, although sold more by the look on her face and the way raven whispered so reverently “this was another dream you know,” she looked over at you “send a woman to the moon, lay in my own bed, in my own home and look up at the stars. see all the improbabilities of space and know there's always a way to solve them.”

\--

she will propose to you there, on one knee with a ring made of stardust.

**Author's Note:**

> written in one go - it has been a long, long time


End file.
